Past Our Demise
by Alice of the Sweets
Summary: It's their job to guard the pizzeria, even past their ultimate demises, and existing past that might just help. Or, in which Mike Schmidt finds himself saved by people who should be dead.


Usually, on nights like this, Mike seriously wondered why he still worked here. He thought about whether he cared for the little sister his deadbeat mother made him deal with a week ago and he wondered if it was even worth it to pay to fix her broken legs with the money he managed to get from this. Sure, he earned from here, but going on the street and selling food to make money didn't seem like a bad alternative to nearly dying night after night. Even selling meth mixed with sugar to drunken businessmen would give him the money he needed. Usually, on nights like this, he wondered.

This was not one of those nights.

Mike was fighting because he knew he had no other choice, his hands scrabbling madly on the floor for something that could at the very least break him out of the bear's vice grip. As if sensing his motives, the arm Freddy was holding him by twisted, and the frantic thoughts turned to pain and panic. Something in his leg was broken, he could tell. It hung limply, turned in a way that the human body was not meant to be turned. Shit.

Something inside of him screamed that he was going to die, and no matter how he tried Mike couldn't just push it down. He couldn't just ignore the sense of helplessness he felt right now. There was just an eventuality here. No matter how good he got, no matter how he learned the robots' patterns, he would always die here. The nights were just prolonging the inevitable. If he didn't leave, he would die, and he couldn't just let himself leave after everything he fought for wasted away in an unpaid hospital bed.

It was five A.M. on the sixth night Mike worked there. Everything seemed as it should be. He was still shaken up at the thought of the death everyone else in this room had suffered before him and he still needed the money. His movements that night had been faster more calculated, and as he'd hypothesised the animatronics seemed to become more persistent as well. The thing is, though, he hadn't been careful enough.

He really had done badly that night, especially with his power. He'd never been any good at conserving it in a job like this one. To show for this, the available power somehow went out at the stroke of five, which was most definitely not a good thing.

Freddy had appeared at the right door, and though Mike felt like he was doomed anyway he'd decided to risk it. So, just when Freddy got into the office he made a break for it, running through the very door the robot had went through and ducking into the east hall the first chance he got. Freddy had been chasing after him, but the animatronic was slower and so he got back into the office and hid under the desk where he really just hoped he wouldn't be found.

In hindsight, he should have buried himself in the supply closet's trash instead.

After a few minutes, the bear found him again, and this time there was no room for escape. He'd been grabbed and pulled away, despite every effort to escape including and up to throwing the chair at his attacker. Freddy refused to budge, dragging him off to his ultimate demise with only a tiny dent to show for his efforts. The worst part was that even the fucking dent was fixing itself. What were these things?

Whatever they were, one of them was currently dragging Mike to the back room, where he would probably meet the same fate as his predecessors. His leg was broken, in serious pain, and a small part of him wondered how his twelve-year old sister could withstand this in both of her legs when he, a grown man, could barely take one. He felt humiliated, like even if he survived by some miracle he'd still have a broken leg and would need to take the night shift again tomorrow and for weeks on end if he wanted even the thought of getting treatment for this. He was completely and utterly fucked. There was no other word for it. He was going to die alone, crying in pain and utter disgrace, unable to save even the kid he'd been working for and probably going to fade away in whatever afterlife existed for him.

Mike buried his face in the arm that was closest and started to cry, ignoring the idea of anyone watching. He was going to die. He was going to die and no matter how hard he tried there wasn't anything he could do about it.

Almost as a last resort, Mike reached a hand out and grabbed a chair from the dining room. He hit it against Freddy as damagingly as he could, his only thought being to hold onto the leg tightly and watch as the weak, cheap-ass wood shattered. Carefully, he shifted so that the part in his hand was pressed against his throat, the sharp point that had formed from the hit digging into his skin. If he was going to die, he supposed, he was going to die on his own terms.

It was just then that the animatronic in front of him stopped. It stared at the stage like something was on it, though it seemed empty. Mike looked up, tears lining his eyes. Had it decided to kill him here?

In answer to his question, Freddy was knocked out of the way, thrown into the wall by a strange pulse of blackness that was shaped almost like a human. Mike cried out as he hit the floor with a thud, smashing headlong into a table. From somewhere in front of him, someone winced. "Sorry! I'll just d-deal with him first, okay? J-Just hang in there!"

"Go ahead." Mike winced, barely managing to upright himself. He rolled out of the way just quickly enough to dodge when Freddy crashed into the floor beside him, and the black figure tackled it. "Okay, just hold on for a bit longer. I-It'll be over soon, I promise!"

"Right," the guard groaned, collapsed on the ground. Every movement made his bones ache and made his injury bleed profusely. Gritting his teeth, Mike looked up, seeing Freddy's body crack and shatter under the black figure's relentless assault. Finally, when it couldn't even twitch, the figure shifted to face him. Their eyes, the only human thing about them in this strange form, were brown at the inner iris, though the outer part seemed to be rimmed with black. "Hey, are you okay? Did anything really bad hap- oh, i-ignore what I just said." They rushed to his side, laying a hand on the broken leg. Though he could see it, he didn't really feel anything. Was the silhouette becoming more human-looking? At least, their hand was. "I-I'll get Jeremy and he'll deal with this. It's too… bad for me to try."

"No, wait!" Mike stared at them, watching as they froze. The figure really was fading into a more human form, details of clothes and skin forming on their transparent body. "W-What's going on? Who are you?"

The fading stopped and the person (?) returned the confused gaze. "Well, that's hard to explain." The body looked close enough to male for him to safely call this figure that. His eyes were a dark brown, and his wavy black hair was tied into a ponytail on the side. "Do you… have a guess of who I am?"

It took a second before Mike answered. "You're t-the guy on the phone." He had the right voice, at least. "Who's Jeremy? And how is he going to fix this?"

"Jeremy's… the team healer. O-Or, at least, Will- Vincent calls him that." The man shook his head. "I really should… get him. Stay here, o-okay? If you move, I'll… I'll sic Vincent on you! I-It's not a nice punishment." He disappeared, leaving the smaller of the two to an empty room with a broken leg.

What was that?

Before Mike could really do anything, the man was back, this time with a slightly smaller man that had brown hair and blue eyes. The latter looked shocked, like he hadn't expected to be there, but once he caught sight of Mike's bloody everything his expression grew understanding. "Next time, Scott, say the thing out loud. Broken legs?"

"No, j-just one," Mike answered, and the man who was presumably Jeremy nodded. His body turned completely black, and when he touched the black-haired guard's leg everything started to mend. "It's okay. We'll get you back to normal in a second."

When the leg finally healed, Mike turned to try and catch sight of them. Jeremy returned to his human-looking form, breathing out a sigh of relief. "I didn't mess up."

"You never do, Jere." The man who was on the phone smiled. "You can get back to whatever you were doing now, if you want. I'll take the newbie to the back room and see if he can walk right."

Without even a word, Jeremy disappeared, and Mike gingerly got on his feet. "W-Why are you helping me?"

"You deserve to live," the man answered. He held out his hand, which quickly turned black along with the rest of him. "I'm Scott Thorne. It's… nice to meet you."

"Mike Schmidt. It's nice to meet you too." Mike took the offered hand. "H-Hey, what happened that night?"

"What night?"

"T-The… well, I mean the fourth call. What was that? What did they do to you? Why are you still alive?"

Scott's posture grew rigid, and he pulled out of Mike's grip. It took him a second to be able to look at the smaller guard again, clearly uncomfortable. His answer was short only at first. "It was slaughter," he said, and his hands balled into fists. "It was… suicide, actually. Do you… want to know what they did?"

He apparently took the silence as incentive to continue. Scott's voice shook, whether with pain or ecstasy Mike couldn't tell. "I guess… maybe I've needed to talk about this for a while. I-I don't know if it was monstrous. It m-might have been justified. But… they dragged me out of the office. I wasn't… fighting or kicking or panicking like William did. I-I was calm. They ripped my a-arm off and they stuffed it into my mouth. It was… torture, maybe, but I don't know. I laughed. I laughed in their faces. I wouldn't let them do what they w-wanted. I-I knew why they… why they hated me and I didn't care. So I t-took a broken p-piece of metal and I stuffed it into my own throat to die-!"

Mike gulped. "H-Hey, if you didn't want to tell me-"

"No, no… it's fine." Scott shook his head. "I-I should really stop mentioning bloodshed in f-front of the animatronics. I… don't think Foxy likes me anymore, e-especially after what I did. We should go! V-Vincent and Jeremy would be worried if we couldn't… make it so quickly. A-Actually, just leave. We'll take it from here." He smiled shakily. "L-Look, you should really just stop working here. You can… quit at any time you like. Just tell the boss. I-I'm sure he'll understand! If you really need a job, w-we can clear up a place at the day shift, but don't even think about coming back to be the night watch. C-Chris has been meaning to quit for a while now. We should be able to get you his job."

Mike let himself be pushed out to the entrance, mind still reeling. Scott closed the glass doors behind him and they locked almost automatically. "See you, Mike!"

The guard sighed, checking to see first if his leg worked and then heading to his truck. A glance at his watch showed that it was six, though the sun hadn't risen yet. Good; he had incentive to leave.

He'd come back after he went to bed. No matter what Scott said, he couldn't leave unless he was sure of a job.

Mike was starting to hate nights like this.


End file.
